2020

Lead Role

Essential attributes for those leading innovation efforts

by Peter Merrill

Last
year in this column, I wrote about the innovation leader’s job from a
team perspective.1 Now let’s focus on three personal attributes for
innovation leaders: entrepreneurship, being an explorer and the ability to move
fast.

There’s a lot of interest in
entrepreneurship, which is tied to interest in innovation. Universities offer
combined courses in innovation and entrepreneurship. However, the two
activities are definitely different. They are complementary, but different. Key
facets of any innovator are focus, creativity and teamwork.

Contrary
to popular belief, neither Thomas Edison nor Steve Jobs were
innovators—they were far more entrepreneurs. Edison did not invent the
light bulb, and Jobs did not invent the MP3. They both saw great ideas and
built the infrastructures for them to have value.

Entrepreneurship

I have always been
an entrepreneur at heart from when I ran my first business—handling a
market stand—to becoming a chief executive at a major U.K. corporation. I
have been through the school of hard knocks. Today, I find myself to be an
entrepreneur enabler—I applaud the work of people like Michael Young, a
well-known social entrepreneuer.2 All entrepreneurs are driven, and
I have discovered that my desire for independence was my driver as an
entrepreneur.

As you probably know, the innovation
process breaks into two phases:

A
creative phase in which an opportunity is seen and a solution is developed.

An
execution phase in which a working solution is developed and commercialized.

In truth, the opportunity seen by the
entrepreneur is more often financial. For the innovator, it’s about a new way
of doing something.

Creative people are often poor at commercializing
their ideas. They are passionate about their idea and often will give up
everything for their idea. They often do not manage money well and will sell
their souls to the devil to see their idea reach fruition.

To succeed, an innovator at some point must
become an entrepreneur or partner with an entrepreneur. Unfortunately,
entrepreneurs often become leaders as a result of their financial skills. We
have seen this lead to businesses’ demise when the entrepreneur and the
innovator have different objectives. An example is the split between Jobs and
Steve Wozniak.

Good entrepreneurs are risk takers, but
they are also good money managers. They calculate risk and act accordingly.
Frequently, they are not committed to the idea. When a business reaches a
certain size, they will sell it for financial gain.

The entrepreneur is a self-promoter. This
is a necessary attribute for an entrepreneur, but not the only one. This must
be tempered with the recognition and collaboration with colleagues.

I have a strong aversion to the concept of
the "Dragon’s Den" or "Shark Tank" reality TV shows, which pit people with
good, new ideas, but limited negotiating experience against people with
extensive negotiation experience. Good for TV, but bad for the country.

What is for the greater good of the country
is what matters. We know strong collaboration is fundamental to innovative
success. Robbing the poor to pay the rich is not a business ethic we should
promote. I am not comfortable with this. Shameless theft should not be accepted
nor applauded.

No individual will have all the attributes
to be both an entrepreneur and an innovator. This is why I come back to the
importance of collaboration between those who are primarily innovators and
those who are primarily entrepreneurs.

Being an explorer

Clearly,
entrepreneurial ability is a vital attribute, and that means a willingness to
take risks. This leads to the second attribute of the innovator, which is also risk based: the willingness to explore and take a team into
the unknown. This means building trust in the team. It does not mean having a
vision.

At the start of my project to write ISO
10018Quality management—Guidelines on people
involvement and competence, one of the team members asked me what my
vision would be for the finished standard. I answered that I had no idea and
that the finished standard would depend on the team, not me.

I had a clear objective, but that is
different. That objective was that I was tasked by the International
Organization of Standardization with developing a standard that would enable
organizations to involve their people more closely in the operation of a
quality management system based on ISO 9001. Over time, the product evolved,
and the final product was designed to meet the needs of the end user. A clear
objective or challenge is a critical requirement before you and your team start exploring.

Mission and process

Amazon set the
challenge of delivering its products more rapidly—hence its pursuit of
using drones for delivery. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy set the national
challenge of sending a man to the moon and safely returning him to Earth before
the end of the decade.

Having agreed on the challenge, a leader
must be close to the team not only to ensure all members are aligned with the
challenge, but also to draw on ideas as the journey unfolds.

The leader’s job becomes more complex:
staying connected to the end goal, but also staying connected to the parent
organization. This means having a clear process that the team understands and
is used regularly as a check and balance for the mission.

I have described the innovation process
previously in simple terms to help develop understanding. The reality, of
course, is more complex. Figure 1 emphasizes the iterative component of the
innovation process.

The first step in the process is to find
the opportunity or unmet customer need. The second step is to find conceptual
solutions. In the real world, we do not settle on and select our own preferred
solution. We test the concepts with the customer. For a manufactured product,
for example, 3-D printing has become a huge asset here.

The
internal looping in Figure 1 shows how we must constantly test. A critical job
for any leader is to ensure this happens. The leader must stay close to the
team and close to the customer. You should expect to have a clear
identification of customers’ needs—not the solution—in the first
couple of months of the project.

The
concepts you place in front of customers are to stimulate their thinking and
demonstrate what’s possible. In a past life, I worked in the world of fashion.
A fashion designer will create a collection, which is exactly that: They
collect their ideas, and among the ideas will be radical new ideas they are
testing with their potential customer. This is especially true with couture.
This way you test and learn through a continuous "what if" process to draw out
alternatives. It is especially important for the leader to draw in unhappy
customers at this early stage of the process.

As ideas
develop, the leader must challenge the team. The advantage a leader has is a
degree of objectivity, and this enables the leader to challenge assumptions. At
the second stage of conceptual solutions or ideation, there will be a lot of
assumptions. The leader must ensure the ideas are collected and challenged.
Every assumption must be tested to find what you don’t know and what other
choices you have.

This, again, must engage the customer and
will have the advantage of strengthening the customer relationship.

As assumptions are tested, the associated
risk will be evaluated. This is where the leader must connect back to the
parent organization and ensure the leadership of the parent fully understands
what’s happening. The leader may even have the job of ensuring the organization
understands the innovation process. This may well be a half-day or one-day
in-depth session, even though business leaders will say they can get it in 40
minutes. As the solution evolves, one more issue the leader must address is the
business model for delivering the solution.

Moving fast

Throughout all of
this activity, speed matters. This is the third essential attribute of the
innovation leaders. They have to ensure the business leaders and team members
understand the need for speed. Somewhere, someone will have seen the same
customer need you have found and will probably be working on the same solution.
See Figure 2.

Experience
shows that 75% of innovation or start-up projects fail to meet objectives. This
is mainly the result of having a grand, inflexible plan at the start and
failing to get customer feedback. Fail early and be ready to change or, using a
fashionable business term, learn to pivot.

References

Peter Merrill is president of Quest Management Systems, an
innovation consultancy based in Burlington, Ontario. Merrill is the author of
several ASQ Quality Press books, including Do It Right the
Second Time, second edition (2009), and Innovation
Generation (2008). He is a member of ASQ and chair of the ASQ Innovation
Division.